Elysian Fields

Inspired by the works of Tennessee Williams.

‘Elysian Fields is not a narrative work – well, maybe not a concrete narrative – but it certainly has a lateral, poetic structure, and it is perhaps in this area that Tennessee Williams excelled most as a writer, for he could be both fearless and elusive in just one sentence.

‘Williams was an avid admirer of makers of dance. He liked to refer to them and he revered the structural rigour of choreography. He befriended Balanchine and famously collaborated with Anna Sokolow in the creation of Camino Real. His stage notes and physical descriptions of characters and human behaviour are utterly choreographical.

‘…I believe he had a unique eye for the balance and tolerance of people behaving in extreme life moments which he described with great accuracy – the violence, the heat and the desperate search to be understood.

‘So I would not miss the opportunity to say “Happy 100 Tenn!”, and in this I rejoice in the the company of the Rambert dancers (my third work for them) alongside Terry King, the great fight director who helped me so much in fleshing out, in complete safety, the violence of the male characters; Katrina Lindsay; Michael Hulls; and Penny Dyer, the esteemed dialect coach who worked with the dancers to help them move with a Southern accent.’